The MAA is excited to announce our 2025 MAA Shooter of the Year competition. Based on results from five of our most popular events, a shooter of the year will be awarded in six different divisions at the 2025 Voyageur Cup.

Complete standings for the 2025 Shooter of the Year competition are available here.

Please review the competition information and rules below.

Divisions and Prizes

The MAA will award a shooter of the year in six divisions:

• Male compound
• Female compound
• Male recurve
• Female recurve
• Male barebow
• Female barebow

The shooter of the year winner in each division will receive $300. Second place will receive $150 and third place will receive $75.

There are no specific age requirements. Competitors will simply have to shoot the adult distances and rounds to earn points toward the competition. This means that in most cases young adults and up for NFAA and U18 and up for USA Archery will be eligible.

MAA membership is required to be eligible for the shooter of the year competition.

Events

Shooter of the year points will be earned at the following events during 2025:

• MAA All-State Vegas Shoot (qualifying round)
• MAA/NFAA State Indoor Championship
• MAA State 25-Meter Championship
• MAA/NFAA State Field Championship
• MAA North Star Open & Voyageur Cup (qualifying round)

The total shooter of the year score will be determined by an archer’s four highest scoring events.

• In order to award a second place prize, there must be at least four competitors who record scores in a particular division during the year. A minimum of seven archers will be required in order to award a third place prize.
• Archers must compete in at least three events to be eligible for the competition. Archers will use their four best events for their final performance points total. If an archer shoots fewer than four events, their total will be based on the performance points they earned at the events in which they participated.
• (New for 2024) Archers must shoot at least one indoor and one outdoor competition to be eligible for the competition.

The MAA is using a system called the Performance Method that uses data from NFAA and USA Archery national championship results to calculate “performance points” for a particular score in the compound, recurve, and barebow divisions.

You can read more about how the Performance Method was developed on the archerytoolkit.net web site here. There are lookup tables available as well that will show you how many performance points will be earned for a particular score.

Some notes about performance points:

• Shooter of the year points for all categories will be determined as a percentage of points possible at the 25-meter event. There aren’t enough scores available at national events to create a good model for that round.
• Similarly, barebow archers will use the “percentage of points possible” method for the NFAA indoor round (including Xs) and any field archery rounds.

If you’d like to learn more about the origin of the Performance Method including some of the statistics behind it, try the article The Performance Method: An Improved Archer Ranking System for Determining a “Shooter of the Year” by Tim Wilson.